The majority of managers believe that digital transformation is critical to their organizations and adopting new technology and tools that increase productivity, agility, and helping make better and faster decisions, is inevitable. However the pace of technological change is too slow, according to a study conduct by MIT Sloan Management Review and Capgemini Consulting, organisations still struggling with data despite of the investments made in this area, according to another research conducted by Gartner Inc in 2018.
Digital transformation requires cultural and behavioural changes, new ways of working and new practices related to working in different ways. People are the agents of changing, so engaging the right people is key.
As part of the digital transformation initiative, lots of organisations are modernising their data warehouses. This repository doesn't fit the purpose anymore, although it's not the “Data Warehouse” itself but mostly the approach in which it is built in.
Traditional approaches don't work anymore, they take too long, cost too much, are not easy to change, and new ways most be found to overcome this restrictions.
To define a strategy for Modernising Data Warehouses decisions must be made, not only in terms of approach but technology to support it as well and to make this decisions and adopt new ways of doing things, knowledgeable people must be involved, otherwise modernising a data warehouse will mean to select a different ETL tool (maybe the trending one) or a different database and built a new data warehouse using the same process and approach as before, and that will lead to some results as before.
Because data modernising will be crucial to your organisation as part of digital transformation, make sure you have the right people involved, the knowledgeable, informed and engaged ones.
Although technology will have a huge impact in the process, it always have been clearer to me that Digital Transformation starts with people, and it’s important to make sure that your “Pioneers” employees are the ones who are make the decisions concerning your data strategy and not the “Laggards” ones, otherwise you will be a Follower and not a Leading company.
by Paula de Oliveira
Passio Consulting co-founder and Managing Partner